


The Imagination of [His] Evil Heart

by NothingEnough



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Aziraphale Gets Around, Comedy, Crowley is Bad at Feelings (Good Omens), Denial of Feelings, Female-Presenting Crowley (Good Omens), Footnotes, Loads Of Footnotes, M/M, Male-Presenting Crowley (Good Omens), Meta, Pre-Slash, Theology, UST
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-26
Updated: 2020-01-26
Packaged: 2021-02-27 03:41:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22420483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NothingEnough/pseuds/NothingEnough
Summary: "Crowley has something no other demons have, especially not Hastur: an imagination."This is how the Hell that happened.
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 23





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DoubtingRabbit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DoubtingRabbit/gifts).



> Happy birthday, darling. <3

There's a perfectly reasonable explanation for why Crowley, of all the legionaries of Hell, possessed an imagination: he worked for it. 

Throughout his time on Earth, Crowley sometimes rued that he'd ever been an angel. Angels obeyed, they didn't think. They inspired, they didn't create. They instructed, they didn't build. If he'd only been born a human[1], he could've come up with something truly evil, something New, not just the same old look-at-the-Commandments-and-do-the-opposite rubbish. 

But it took the unutterable boredom of the fourteenth century for the work to become worthwhile.

More specifically, it was late September, either the 24th or the 25th, and he was going by Aliz Cecily. She wasn't clear on the day because she was extremely drunk, as she had been every night since the King had granted Chaucer a gallon of wine per day for life. Good old Geoffrey didn't forget the sprightly redheaded lady who had inspired one or two of his Tales[2], and he was happy to share the wealth. She stumbled back into her flat on an otherwise-empty lane in a neighborhood which had yet to recover its population from the Black Death a couple decades past. 

She thought of drinking a little more, just Sailing Over The Edge Of Reasonableness, seeing as she had nothing on. Aziraphale had hopped to the Continent eight years ago, following _y_ _et another_ ginger poet, this one to Bad Aachen[3] . She hadn't even had to prompt the events which would later be dubbed the Hundred Year's War. The Black Death, all right, she might've helped that spread a bit faster than even a virus could have done otherwise, but it had been a _virus_ in the end, a thing that could be used for demonic purposes--but, ultimately, had come from Up Above.

Which was just the problem, wasn't it? For all their bragging about wiles, the best tools Hell uncovered all came from the wrong LORD. If they were ever going to go anywhere with this War On Heaven business, they needed their own weapons.

They needed what Geoff had on tap. A little smidge of creativity.

So instead of Sailing Over etc., Aliz took her throne--well, more accurately, she sort of lazed across it, thoughtlessly hitching up her black-silk skirts well past her knees and the point of propriety, and thought. She'd been around enough creative types to have an idea of how it was done: intoxication was usually involved (check), and isolation (triple check), and of course, having a good think.

But what about?

The obvious choice was the Final Battle, by her lights; that was when her side would need the most help. She spent a good ten minutes considering how the Invasion Of Heaven could turn in their favor, until she realized that she was merely rehashing preexisting battle plans[4]. She might have to start a little smaller.

So: what about something New-ish? What was something she'd only scarcely dared to consider in all her time?

It took a good hour of stalwartly holding all that wine in her bloodstream before she hit upon it: _what if she were the Lord of Hell?_

That had possibility. Aliz had never, of course, seriously considered overthrowing her Great Dread Lord, that seemed right impossible, and she'd _never_ commit to something so blasphemous in a serious manner[5]. But this was supposed to be a lark. A flight of fancy. A daydream. Not only did most humans never achieve their daydreams, most would be horrified if they came to pass.

Surely it couldn't hurt to think of it.

So she tried. For this one, she did tap into one of the thirty casks of wine she kept in her flat, drinking half of it before she started, and the other half when she accepted the truth.

Aliz wasn't imagining anything, here. She was merely remembering all the best times she'd had on Earth, only forever.

"But all right," she said to Cimabue's _Christ Mocked_ [6] hanging over her fireplace, "all right, here'sss a thought. What if, now, what if thass part of the trick? I _felt_ like I's imagining _sssome_ thing for a moment there. Ssso mebbe thass what isss like. Imaginin's juss rememberin' sssomething thass not happened."

Smaller than the Great And Glorious Revolution To Come, and much smaller than being the Lord Of Hell. She ought to squeeze her mind into a particular memory, then; that should be small enough, and once there, perhaps she could change it. If she could remember something as it ought to have been, and not as it was, then she could think around the damned reverse-obedience blockade, capture some of that nebulous creative energy and jar it for safekeeping.

She stood from her throne, and only fell once on the way to the other casks. She sneered at the topmost barrel. That one had been a gift from the angel. Well, Aliz thought of it as a gift, but in the interests of accuracy, Aziraphale hadn't so much given it to her as left it unguarded.

That night. _That night._

Two glasses later, she tried to make it back to the throne and tripped over her skirt. A particularly foul word left her lips. Her shift ignited, burnt to ashes from the mid-thigh downwards, leaving her in a much-less-trippable garment.[7]

Back on her throne, she stared sullenly into the fire. May as well be _that night_ , since it came to mind. That had been the last time she clapped eyes to Aziraphale.

-tbc-

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1Of course, had this occurred, it is highly unlikely that Crowley's imagination would have benefited Hell, since he would have died and ended up Down Below as fodder. But then, he wouldn't have to live in London in 1374, so that would have been worth it.[return to text]
> 
> 2He's not entirely clear which of the Tales, but then, he had been equally drunk at the time.[return to text]
> 
> 3Hanß died of the dancing mania which struck his town in June of that year, but Aliz had no way of knowing that. To date, only three of Hanß's poems survive, all of them curated in Aziraphale's shop.[return to text]
> 
> 4 Also, she got more depressed the longer she thought of returning to Heaven[return to text]
> 
> 5Not entirely true; see "Good Omens"[return to text]
> 
> 6Crowley lost the painting during a move, but bought it back in 2019[return to text]
> 
> 7Crowley never did receive the credit he thought he deserved for inventing The Little Black Dress, but an objective view of history shows that The Little Black Dress was first developed in what is now central Italy in 92 AD[return to text]


	2. Chapter 2

_"It's Arthur now. Arrr-thuuuuur."_

_"Oh! Dreadfully sorry. You just, you still don't look like an Arthur to me."_

_"Eh, prob'ly you're right. Been thinking of changing it anyhow."_

_"I don't know why you can't be satisfied with one name."_

_"I dunno how_ anybody _can be satisfied with one_ anything _."_

_"I suppose that's the price of a demonic existence. Ever filled with discontent."_

_"Oh, stuff it, I'm not discontented_ all _the time. 'Ey, get me another--oh. Thanks."_

_"Of course. Wouldn't want you too discontented, after all."_

_"Yer such a smug twit. Dunno why I'm here." Arthur drank a quarter of the miracled mead _[1] _._

_"Because I'm waiting for William, and you're keeping me company 'til he arrives."_

_"Oh, right, Willyam. Sorry, I quite forgot who you've got on tap this decade."_

_Aziraphale scrunched his blushing face. "That's a bit crude, even for you."_

_"Not as crude as what you and Willy Boy're getting up to in an hour or so. Say, how do The Lads Upstairs like all those notches on yer bedpost?"_

_"It-it-it, listen, Arthur, it's not as problematic as you're making it out to be. Angels are creatures of Love. Loving humanity is but a reflection of the Great Love that Our L_ _ORD_ _has for his creations."_

 _"So long as you don't naff off and, uh,_ create _anything."_

_"Just so. I know it's difficult for you to understand, being of infernal stock."_

_"... what?"_

_"I don't expect you to comprehend anything about love." How could he make drinking a sip of mead look so self-satisfied _[2] _?_

 _"See, there, you're well mistaken, mate. We know all about it Down Below. There's loads of folks in Hell right now for love _[3] _, 's one of the easiest Tricks In The Book."_

_"It's not the same, my dear, and you know it. You can only offer corporeal delights."_

_"You don't take issue with 'corporeal delights' when Willy Boy's--"_

_"But only because I love him, and he loves me. That's the difference. There's nothing sinful in, well,_ congress _, it's in how you do it, and why. What's done with spiritual love and kindness is holy. And, by definition, not a thing you can do."_

_The smugness cracked, just a scotch, and Arthur saw what lay beneath Aziraphale's words, and it rankled right up his spine and exploded in his brain in one singular hateful revelation:_

_The angel felt sorry for him._

***

"Right, yesss, thass how it went," Aliz said, sneering at the fire as though it were responsible for her struggles. The flames shrank into coals, fearful, until her drunken attention drifted elsewhere and it was safe to burn again.

The conversation had ended there, more or less, since William (there were so many damned Williams back then) had arrived at the inn early. Aziraphale had left. And since then, they'd only communicated by letter--the angel had been extremely busy during the Black Death years, and apart from that, well, he had many reasons to be too occupied for the old pal who he'd once called Crawley.

Those reasons were: _two other_ Williams, a Richard, a Geoffrey (not the one she'd been drinking with), a José María, and of course, that Hanß bloke[4].

But none of that helped her with the essential problem: how to remember something that never happened. If she'd had her druthers, if she'd been a little less squiffed, if That Stupid William Character had been late or never showed… what would she have said?

Aliz worked her wily, swimming mind round that question for a bad and unproductive forty minutes. The trouble was how thoroughly angry the memory made her, almost mad. There were so many protestations she thought she could have offered, but nothing she could think of herself as saying in that moment, after that much mead, to that sanctimonious prick. Nothing that'd have worked.

She almost gave up the whole enterprise, until finally, after reliving the awful memory for the sixty-fifth time, something changed.

_The angel felt sorry for him._

_"Well," said Arthur, "yer wrong."_

_"... oh! I see! You're absolutely right! How silly I've been! By the way, I do think Arthur suits you, after all."_

_"Glad yer being reasonable."_

She tilted the throne back until it balanced perfectly, impossibly, on its two rear legs. She stared up at the ceiling through her silver wireframes. She grinned so hard that one of the ceiling-beams cracked.

Okay. Not great. Far too little, considering the effort. For one thing, her own argument wasn't so much an argument as it was a blunt expression of rage. For another, she could allow that, while the voice and the face were right, the words sounded like nothing the angel would ever say. But _i_ _t_ _was New_. 

She had merely come upon a new problem; not only remembering something that never was, but remembering something that never was with verisimilitude.

"Thass no real problem," she announced to nobody, "I've lisstened to him natter for millenia now. I've got thiss. Iss made. Inna bag. Juss one more glasss."

This might be one glass too many.

Or five.

-tbc-

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1 It had to be, as they were nowhere near Scandinavia in 1298[return to text]
> 
> 2Practice[return to text]
> 
> 3Successful temptations which could be traced to sexual or romantic seduction only awarded tempters half a point[return to text]
> 
> 4 Not that she was keeping count[return to text]


	3. Chapter 3

At three o'clock in the morning, give or take, the finely-tuned infernal machine that was Aliz's mind did something which shocked her out of the experiment. This will surprise exactly no humans in the audience, as it happens with such regularity that non-neurotics can disregard its consequences in safety and in sureness of their own saneness. It certainly would not have surprised Aliz if she'd ever asked any of her artistically-inclined targets about the process of creation--or, more truthfully, if she'd ever listened to them when they complained to her about the trials of writing.

Her imagination, at long last, awakened, and immediately got away from her.

***

_The angel felt sorry for him._

_"Don't you bloody dare," Arthur said, slamming his cup down on the table hard enough to spill a small river of mead across its surface._

_"Don't do that!" Aziraphale tsk'ed. "I've just created that!"_

_"Yer not changin' the subject. D'you think I want your pity? 'Cos if you do, then yer even wronger than you are about love."_

_"I-I don't--that is--well--you don't have to be so cross about it, Craw--I'm so sorry, Arthur-- _[1] _"_

_"There you are, being wrong again. Don't you get tired of it? " _

_"I am _ not _wrong. This is basic theology, my dear, it's in any Bible. St. John's ghostwriter_ [2] _had a good deal to say about it. It's not an insignificant part of The Grand Story, it's the plot.The Word is Love, and you rejected The Word _[3] _."_

_"That ain't The Last Word."_

_"I beg to differ."_

_"Love isn't some airy-fairy _ feeling _, angel. It's a thing you_ do. _You work at love. Like a grudge, only backwards._ [4] _"_

_"How preposterous. The feeling is inextricable from the experience. You, you can't just do things that seem loving without a loving heart.That definitionally_ [5] _makes it not-loving_ [6] _."_

 _"Oh, really? _[7] _"_

 _Aziraphale seemed to notice something in his drinking partner's white, eager face _[8] _that left him nervous. "Yes. Really."_

 _"So, like, then, let's say," Arthur said, as though stalling for time_ [9] _to come up with a real banger, "let's just say, for the sake of example, that I were to work a little demonic magic, and we weren't in this stinking inn anymore. We were back at my flat, where the floors are clean and the fire's warm and there's cups that are gasping to be filled with mead. And we had a few more drinks to set the mood, and you tried to excuse yourself 'cos it's awfully late my dear.And I gave you leave to go, but _ also _gave you leave to use my bed_ [10] _, since you never know, could be roving bands of Normans or whoever it is right now that might accost you on the streets."_

_"We've done all that before."_

_"Yes, but you've _ also _done that with all those damn gingers you take home. Only you let 'em join you._ [11] _"_

_"... what are you suggesting?"_

_"I'm suggesting that if I joined you _[12] _, you couldn't tell the difference between a Night Of Great Spiritual Connexion Ending In The Throes Of Passion and a Night Of Knocking Boots_ [13] _."_

_"Are you."_

_"And, furthermore, I'm suggesting that if I acted loving toward you, that would, like, _ that would be loving you[14] _. Wouldn't it? If you can't tell the difference, then, p'rhaps, there's not one."_

 _Aziraphale gazed at the door to the inn. Looking for William. For an escape. Couldn't exactly blame him. Arthur felt like escaping to literally anywhere else at the moment. _ [15]

_Then the angel smiled. At him._

_"What I'm hearing," Aziraphale said, "is that you love me."_

_"No, that was just an example. _[16] _" His companion and enemy raised an eyebrow. "Okay, yes, fine, sure, absolutely yes_ [17] _, you are sort of the only thing making All Of This worthwhile for me, but, y'know, that's sort of, not a thing I'm gonna let get in the way of our working relationship_ [18]."

_"N-naturally. We're both professionals."_

_"Of a sort."_

_"Yours or mine?"_

_"Mine. You never have a bed._ [19] _"_

***

Indeed, the demon who would one day be called Crowley wasn't the best of anything[20].

For instance, the single loudest exclamation of the word "fuck"[21] will, relative to Aliz Cecily's Place In Time, occur on 21 July, 1997. It will be said by Mr. Paul Remington, of Gainesville, Georgia, in the United States. He will be a gentleman famous for his capacity and passion for swearing, including the description of Jesus Christ employing a variety of inanimate objects, and somehow, stretching the word "goddamn" until it contained five syllables. He will be cut off in traffic, slam on his breaks, jolting his three teenaged children almost out of their bucket seats, and he will scream " ** _f_** ** _uck_** " so loudly that his children will forget what they are arguing about. They will ride home in relative silence. His children will later solemnly recall the occasion, although they will not find it nearly as funny as The Time Dad Said 'Jesus Christ On A Bicycle', No Really, He Said It Just Like That, What If The Chain Caught His Robes[22].

The second-loudest exclamation of the word "fuck" is, honorarily and in perpetuity, reserved for anyone who's worked in a restaurant.

But, coming in at a comfortable third place, having yet to be topped at the time of this writing, is the "fuck" uttered by Miss Aliz Cecily on the night of September 24th or 25th, she can't recall which, in the year 1374, when she came out of her reverie and understood the final, fatal problem with imagining things.

Once she thought of how warm Aziraphale's lips would feel, she could not unthink it.

And so, loud enough to rattle the windows and split that ceiling-beam into something that would kill the flat's next occupant, she "fuck"ed it.

-end-

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1That's better. I think having him stammer makes it sound more real, don't you? By the by, I'm taking the footnotes away from the author, since he's not using 'em right.[return to text]
> 
> 2John was such a lazy bastard[return to text]
> 
> 3"Rejection" is a bit strong[return to text]
> 
> 4That's neat. Well done, me.[return to text]
> 
> 5He's always using ten-bob words when a 50p word would do[return to text]
> 
> 6Little weak, but I'll allow it[return to text]
> 
> 7Not sure where I'm going with this, but it's prob'ly brilliant[return to text]
> 
> 8Wait. What is my face doing?[return to text]
> 
> 9Wait. What am _I_ doing?[return to text]
> 
> 10O-kay, maybe stop with this metaphor, simile, whatever. I'm making me sound like I want something I don't.[return to text]
> 
> 11No.[return to text]
> 
> 12Nonononononono. Nope. I'm done. This has been a gas, but it's over.[return to text]
> 
> 13I SAID IT'S OVER[return to text]
> 
> 14IT'S TIME TO STOP[return to text]
> 
> 15Hell, I'm down here away from the action and I want to die[return to text]
> 
> 16Weak![return to text]
> 
> 17Weaker[return to text]
> 
> 18weakest[return to text]
> 
> 19Ridiculous. Stupid. He'd never. He wants the best of everything, and I'm not even the best of demons. Idiot. Moron.[return to text]
> 
> 20That's it. I'm outta these bloody footnotes.[return to text]
> 
> 21Not including the equivalent term in other languages, as everyone on that list are Spaniards[return to text]
> 
> 22Paul may or may not be based on the author's father[return to text]


End file.
